"They're saying a dale nowadays about fathers and children--daughters
being separate beings, and all to that. But show me the daughter that
could do better for herself than my gel's father has done for her. She
has a big fortune, and her husband has a big name, and what more do they
want in this world anyway?"

"Nothing at all," came from various parts of the room.

"Neighbours," said my father, looking round him with a satisfied smile,
"I'm laying you dry as herrings in a hould, but before I call on you to
drink this toast I'll ask the Bishop to spake to you. He's a grand man
is the Bishop, and in fixing up this marriage I don't in the world know
what I could have done without him."

The Bishop, still fingering his jewelled cross and smiling, spoke in his
usual suave voice. He firmly believed that the Church had that morning
blessed a most propitious and happy union. Something might be said
against mixed marriages, but under proper circumstances the Church had
never forbidden them and his lordship (this with a deep bow to my
husband) had behaved with great liberality of mind.

As for what their genial and rugged host had said of certain foolish and
dangerous notions about the relations of father and child, he was
reminded that there were still more foolish and dangerous ones about the
relations of husband and wife.

From the earliest ages of the Church, however, those relations had been
exactly defined. "Let wives be subject to their husbands," said the
Epistle we had read this morning, and no less conclusive had been our
closing prayer, asking that the wife keep true faith with her husband,
being lovely in his eyes even as was Rachel, wise as was Rebecca, and
dutiful as was Sara.

"Beautiful!" whispered Aunt Bridget to Lady Margaret. "It's what I
always was myself in the days of the dear Colonel."

"And now," said the Bishop, "before you drink this toast and call upon
the noble bridegroom to respond to it," (another deep bow to my
husband), "I will ask for a few words from the two legal gentlemen who
have carried out the admirably judicious financial arrangements without
which this happy marriage would have been difficult if not impossible."

Then my husband's lawyer, with a supercilious smile on his clean-shaven
face, said it had been an honour to him to assist in preparing the way
for the "uncrowned king of Ellan." ("It _has_, sir," cried my father in
a loud voice which straightened the gentleman's face in